What if there were a computer that
could answer virtually any question? IBM engineers are developing such a
machine, teaching it to compete on the quiz show Jeopardy. In
February 2011, it will face off in a nationally televised game against
two of the game’s greatest all-time winners, Ken Jennings and Brad
Rutter. Final Jeopardy tells the riveting story behind the match.

Final Jeopardy carries readers
on a captivating journey from the IBM lab to the podium. The story
features brilliant Ph.D.s, Hollywood moguls, knowledge-obsessed Jeopardy
masters — and a very special collection of silicon and circuitry named
Watson. It is a classic match of Man vs. Machine, not seen since Deep
Blue bested chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov. But Watson will need to
do more than churn through chess moves or find a relevant web page. It
will have to understand language, including puns and irony, and master
everything from history and literature to science, arts, and
entertainment.

At its heart, Final Jeopardy
is about the future of knowledge. What can we teach machines? What will
Watson’s heirs be capable of in ten or twenty years? And where does
that leave humans? As fast and fun as the game itself, Final Jeopardy shows how smart machines will fit into our world — and how they’ll disrupt it.

Get the eBook version of Stephen Baker’s Final Jeopardy: Man vs. Machine and the Quest to Know Everything
a month before the epic February 2011 event— A nationally-televised
face-off between Jeopardy! all-time winners Ken Jennings and Brad
Rutter, and an IBM-engineered computer named Watson. The eBook’s final
chapter will divulge the winner and analyze the match, and will be
available to readers as a free update directly after the event finale
airs.

And about Houghton Mifflin Harcourt:

HMH is a Boston-based
publishing company tracing its roots back to the 1830s. Over the years,
HMH launched many notable careers, including those of Willa Cather,
Carson McCullers, Philip Roth, Paul Theroux, Robert Stone, Jhumpa
Lahiri, and Jonathan Safran Foer. The company also numbers Tim O'Brien,
Edna O'Brien, Cynthia Ozick, and Ward Just among its fine authors of
fiction. HMH's nonfiction list features seminal works by Winston
Churchill, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., John Kenneth Galbraith, Rachel
Carson, Jane Goodall, Eric Schlosser, James Carroll, and Richard
Dawkins. Among our poets we rank the former poet laureate Donald Hall,
Galway Kinnell, Grace Schulman, Alan Shapiro, and the winner of the
Pulitzer Prize in 2007, Natasha Trethewey. HMH publishes the works of
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Best American Series®, The Peterson Field Guides®,
the Gourmet Cookbook and other culinary classics, and acclaimed books in
the fields of science, sports, history, and current affairs.